Esquivel - See It in Sound (1960)

It seems that after producing his fifth American album, Strings Aflame, Esquivel set out to create a unique musical journey. Recorded in 1960, See It in Sound is fascinating because it integrates off-kilter music with real-world ambient sounds. It really expands the concept of what an "album" could be at the time. In this way, it's very modern; it's reminiscent of current soundtrack albums that mix dialogue and sound effects into the music. In fact, in many ways it's like a soundtrack to an imaginary movie.

Esquivel's take on "Brazil," in particular, is an amazing experiment. Calling the album Esquivel's Pet Sounds, Bill Barol's description of this wild track from his excellent 2002 retrospective article in Slate is worth quoting directly: "...the band leader paints a meticulous sound picture of a night on the town gone wrong. An unidentified clubgoer makes his way down rainy streets, the sound of an orchestra muffled but growing stronger, until he opens a door and the music bursts gloriously into the foreground. He eventually returns to the street, the music continuing as background until he arrives at another club; he leaves there, hails a taxi, and makes his way to a third club, the arrangement more incendiary now as a very convincing brawl breaks out to the sounds of breaking glass and running footsteps—a six-minute playlet in music and sound effects, richly detailed and powerfully weird."

This is arguably Esquivel at his most ambitious and certainly his strangest. The brass at RCA felt the same way and refused to release it at the time! This remained for years a legendary "lost" album until it was rescued from the vaults and finally released in 1999, 39 years after it was recorded. I found a rip of this disc on Soulseek, encoded at variable bit rate with LAME 3.93.

Esquivel - See It in Sound (1960)
1. The Peanut Vendor (El Manisero) (3:26)
2. Amazon Paddle Boat (3:58)
3. Honky Tonky Cha Cha (3:03)
4. Cumana (2:47)
5. Brazil (6:03)
6. Chubasco (3:54)
7. Walk to the Bull Ring (2:17)
8. Aurora (2:11)
9. Similau (3:53)
10. Inca's Dream (2:34)
11. Latingo (4:16)

56.8MB RAR archive
MP3: Variable bitrate (205.9kbps average) w/LAME 3.93

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